Previous Chapter Recap: Jenny is having a party on Friday. The old exchange student from England, Tommy, is there and he's the life of the party before he punches Spencer. Again. Kyle ate a magic brownie that he got from Darryl and Ace, and he is completely freaking out. When the Central Park East High schoolers show up looking for Toni, she runs away and hides in a bedroom where Connie and Saige are hanging out.
Kyle, who is as high as a kite, is still freaking out and he nearly jumps out the window. The Central Parkers leave and are shuffled out by Robin. Spencer talks Kyle back into the apartment.

It had been almost a week since the party at Jenny's place, and surprisingly enough nothing interesting had happened.
However, Kyle hadn't been going to school. He blamed his nonexistent cold. But everyone except his parents knew what was really going on – Kyle wouldn't be surprised if the rumor had spread all throughout the school like a disease and that everybody would be whispering about him when he came back.
Kyle was in his pajamas, sitting on his bed with the blanket wrapped around him while browsing on his laptop. Unlike every other teenager's, his was in pristine condition and an expensive model that he hadn't asked for but gotten anyway from his mother last Christmas. Kyle already had an old one that worked perfectly fine, but he didn't want to upset his mother so he had just smiled and said thank you like any other person would.
It was already afternoon, as Kyle noted when he looked at his alarm clock by the bed. Time passed so quickly when you stayed home all day. Or did it pass too slowly?
Kyle had MSN up just to see if anyone would log in soon. School had ended ten minutes ago according to the alarm clock, so with nothing to do he thought he'd entertain himself by seeing who would be the first one to get home and open up MSN. Actually, this wasn't as entertaining as Kyle wanted it to be. Maybe someone was online, but they had just set themselves to offline so they didn't have to talk with him.
He moved the cursor to open up an internet tab and landed on his MySpace page. In the upper left, he was greeted by an old picture of himself that he'd taken in front of his mirror. He thought it looked so cool and that it was the best picture of himself he'd ever taken, but now it didn't look as great. Kyle's smile was forced, the lighting was bad, and his hair covered an embarrassing amount of his face.
The background wasn't very good, either. It was a bright neon green color that made everything on the page hard to read. To add another cherry on top – every person who visited his MySpace page would have to listen to the auto-played melody of Linkin Park songs.
But none of that mattered. It was the messages. The constant flow of messages, friend requests, and comments on his bulletin posts. Endless.
Kyle had browsed through a few of the messages to see why the hell his page had become so popular all of a sudden. It was just a blur of "supportive" messages about his "breakdown" last Friday at Jenny's party. Kyle didn't even remember it, but Jenny had told him everything through tears the next day when he woke up on her couch. Not remembering was probably a blessing in disguise.
The whole thing was obviously Ace's and Darryl's fault, but Kyle hadn't talked to them since he hung out with them in the bathroom and Jenny had probably already given them a decent scolding. Kyle was just happy he wasn't on the receiving end of that.
But... The messages. He couldn't read any more of them because it was all just so fake. Kyle wasn't depressed and he didn't need help. And even if he did need help, how would pity help at all?

The inside of Robin's apartment wasn't as clean as Toni remembered it. She didn't visit his place often, as their mother made sure of.
She'd promised to explain all about the Central Park incident at Jenny's party, but like always she'd prolonged it until the very last minute. Robin was obviously not pleased by that.
Toni had just finished school after a very boring math class. Mrs. Mitchell spoke in the most boring, monotonous voice that Toni had ever had the non-pleasure of hearing. If that wasn't enough, she also scolded Toni whenever she showed up more than a second late. Toni hated her. She actually liked math before Mrs. Witchell had ruined it with her mean old lady-ness.
Anyway, Robin had waited for her right outside the classroom to drag her with him so Toni couldn't avoid him any longer. That was embarrassing.
She was sitting on his second-hand couch waiting for him to finish brewing their cups of coffee. Not that Toni had asked for it, but she could never refuse Robin's sweet hospitality when it made her feel so welcome.
"Here you go," Robin said and offered her the hot drink. He sat down on the cheap couch next to her, adjusting himself for a few minutes to make himself the least amount of uncomfortable he could.
"Thanks," Toni said. She took a sip of the strong smelling drink and burned her tongue immediately, so she sat it down on Robin's coffee table. Which was also a used piece of furniture that looked like it came from a yard sale, if those even existed in New York.
"Jesus, at least ask for a coaster!" he said and quickly fetched one from the kitchen. Any other day Toni would've sniggered at his weird fear of damaging the furniture, but today she just wanted to get it over with and go home. She had a weird longing to meet Victoria again, but that was only because she hadn't seen her since Wednesday last week.
When Robin came back he slid the coaster under Toni's cup and then collapsed down on the couch. The old springs squeaked stubbornly.
"Okay," Robin started. They were both quiet and Toni found it so horribly awkward, but the noisy traffic outside provided some distraction so Toni was grateful for that. "Will you tell me what the hell Friday was about now?"
"I guess," Toni said. She tried relying on the comforting outdoor traffic sounds to get herself through this without getting all emotional. "I... I went to a party last Saturday. The weekend before school started."
"Not a surprise," Robin commented and smiled shyly at her.
"I wasn't invited," Toni quickly clarified. "It was a Central Park high party, by East Harlem..."
"Was Spencer with you?" Robin asked as he stirred around his spoon endlessly in the coffee and sometimes lifted it up only to dip it down again.
"If he was he would've told you the truth forever ago," Toni said. "I went there alone."
"Why?" Robin asked. This time he looked up from the coffee and Toni could just see that look in his eye, the why-would-you-do-something-so-stupid-you're-a-fucking-screwup-Toni look that she had gotten so used to. However, she wasn't used to seeing it plastered on her brother's face that was usually so sweet and goofy.
"I needed money," Toni said. She sucked up the shame boiling inside her to continue. "And I heard some gossip online about how much weed there would be at the Central Park party. You know, people post so much shit on the internet... I thought that if it were true, then it would be worth a fortune."
"You could've asked me for money," Robin said. But Toni just shook her head because she knew he couldn't help. Even with his job at Starbucks and his band gigs, Robin couldn't even afford curtains for his apartment.
"That wouldn't have helped," Toni said. And that was the honest truth. "Maybe for a few days, but then we would just be back to square one."
"Is mom acting up again?" Robin asked Toni under his breath.
"No," Toni said. Yes.
"You know, you could move here if you wanted to...," Robin said silently. "Nobody's forcing you to live with her."
It was a tempting offer that Robin had made more than once, and every time it got harder to say no. His place was so inviting and smelled like coffee beans, while Toni and their mother's apartment hadn't been properly cleaned for months and bills filled up their mail slot.
"I know," Toni assured him. She was 18, and she could make her own choices. "But she's our mom, Rob. Do you want me to just abandon her in that dump of a home?"
"I'm saying that she hasn't been okay since the car crash," Robin said. "It's been seven years and all she's done is gotten worse. She needs help. Professional help."
Toni wanted to protest – wanted to scream at Robin for giving up on her and for thinking that all their mother had become was a heartless alcoholic that didn't care for her daughter. She did. It wasn't often, but sometimes Toni would curl up next to her mother in front of their TV and lay her head on her mother's lap like when she was a kid. She felt so safe when her mother stroked her fingers through Toni's jet black hair.
But she'd promised Robin to tell the truth. The truth was that their mother wasn't doing well despite Toni's desperate efforts.
"We can't afford that," Toni said. "It's gotten really bad this time, Rob. I haven't paid last month's rent and if the landlord wasn't so understanding we would be homeless right now. And the bills are piling up... I don't have enough money. I won't be able to pay for next month's rent either. He'll kick us out this time, I know he will..."
Toni couldn't hold it any longer. The problems were stacked on her shoulders and they were too heavy to carry, but she couldn't drop them. She was responsible for all of them. The wetness filled her eyes and Toni wiped it away as soon as she realized that the waterworks were kicking in. Robin didn't say anything; he just pulled her in for a hug.
"I'm sorry," she sniffled. "I didn't mean to..."
"Quiet," Robin shushed her as he stroked her hair.
"No, wait," Toni said and got up from the couch to wipe the tears away. "I have to finish the story."
Robin looked at her and gave her a nod while Toni tried to pick herself back up again.
"Okay," she began. Her voice was still a little shaky and unpredictable, but she ignored that for now. "I went to the Central Park party alone. I wasn't even sure if I was going to do it, but when I got there it was so packed that nobody even noticed me. So..."
Toni wished that Robin would finish the sentence for her, because she wasn't capable of trusting herself to say it. Saying it would make the reality even harsher. Pushing the thoughts away with all the power she had left, she continued:
"I grabbed a few beers before swiping the... Stuff. Took me a while to find it. Everybody was completely wasted so it was pretty easy. Too easy, almost."
Toni paused for a minute to think back on it. She'd arrived at the party a few hours after it had begun, so she'd blended into the crowd pretty well even if she, most of the time, looked like she had stepped out of a band album cover. Maybe that's why it was so easy for the Central Parkers to find her later.
"I got most of their stuff...," Toni said. "It was all stashed inside this plastic Trader Joe's bag. They must've seen me on the way out, though. I heard someone behind me yelling but I just ran out the building."
She remembered her heart beating when she stumbled down the stairs while trying to not spill the bag's contents everywhere. She looked behind her for a second and saw that beefy guy that had shown up at Jenny's party, looking so angry that Toni could feel his rage just by glancing at him for one short moment.
"I got out on the street and I spotted this police car pulling up. I guess it was because of the really loud music, so I could've gotten away with the weed but... I don't know, I was too scared. So I grabbed the bag, ran down the sidewalk, and dumped it all in this dumpster on an alleyway."
Robin still hadn't said anything. He just sat on the couch with his hands wrapped around the coffee and his dark brown hair clutching against his furrowed forehead.
"I thought that was it," Toni admitted. Or at least, that's what she hoped for – that nobody would mention her failed heist and that she'd somehow magically get money from someplace else. "But on Monday before school I bumped into one of the Central Parkers. That fucking stalker... He told me that I had until Friday. That if I didn't give it all back to him before Friday there'd be hell to pay. I tried to tell him it was in the dumpster, but he didn't believe me."
Then came the texts. Her poor phone was filled with the disgusting, threatening words.
"I got these texts," Toni said. She had to sit down for this one, so she joined Robin on the couch. "Every day, from an unknown number. I don't know where the hell he got my number from. Maybe he got it from asking around, or the yellow pages. I don't fucking know."
"Why didn't you block him?" Robin spoke up.
"I did," Toni clarified quickly. "But they kept coming anyway, from different numbers."
You fucking whore. You're lucky you're a girl. Otherwise I would've cut both your fucking hands right off.
"So you just ignored it?" Robin said. "You didn't care at all when Friday came, even though he warned you?"
"Stop blaming me!" Toni snapped at him. "What was I supposed to do? I went back to the dumpster on Wednesday and the bag was fucking gone! It's not my fault that New York hobos have such good sense of smell." You know I'm coming for you, bitch. I bet you're looking forward to it. Slut.
"You had all week to tell someone!" Robin said. "Instead you just ignored it until the last minute, like you always do. Do you even know what happened after the Central Parkers showed up? Kyle nearly jumped out the window, for fuck's sake! And where were you?"
"That's not fair," Toni argued. "If the Central Parkers had seen me, they would've beaten me up."
You know what? Good thing I didn't chop your dirty hands off. If I did, you wouldn't be able to give me my reward.
"Toni!" Robin shouted. It made Toni flinch. "You don't get it! This could've gone way more terrible than it did. You screwed up!"
There it was. That accusation that Toni knew popped up in everyone's heads when they looked at Toni. Screw-up. Like she didn't know any better than just fuck up everything good in her life and destroy all the relationships she had.
"No," she just said. "You can't call me that. Not you."
Toni had this nightmare that Robin would just scream it at her endlessly – screw-up, screw-up, screw-up – but instead he tensed up and there was a spark in his brown eyes that seemed to say that he regretted it. However, Toni missed that because she just stared down at her dark reflection in the coffee that had started to get cold in her shivering hands.
"What are we going to do, then?" Toni asked the cup of coffee. The well of answers.
"We can't call the police, obviously," Robin said. "Even if that's what I would want to do. Okay, look... You're moving in here and I'll find a psychiatric hospital for mom. Change your phone number too, and –"
"Wait, wait," Toni interrupted him. "A fucking nuthouse? Are you insane? I mean... You don't think mom is, do you?"
"It's not a nuthouse," he said. "I read about it and it's not like they'll lobotomize her or stuff her in an isolating cell with a straitjacket strapped on."
"But she's not a lunatic!" Toni said. "If you put her in an asylum, she'll become one! And she'll think we abandoned her and that we hate her. They'll knock her out with pills and she won't even recognize us when she gets out!"
"Calm down," Robin told her. "We'll visit her as often as we can. She might be mad, but once she gets better she'll understand. Yeah? It'll be just like before."
"Fuck you," Toni said. Robin was a little surprised and looked at her with his mouth open. "It will never be like before."
Without realizing, Robin's finger was stroking the upper part of his nose where his fading scar was. If you didn't look for it you wouldn't see it, but Robin could never forget it was there.
"I know," Robin said and let go of the scar. "Sorry. I take it back."
"Good," Toni said even if she was still fuming.
"But... That's the only option we have. Please, Antonia. She really needs help and it won't come if she keeps staying at home. And I'll help you settle in here, get you a job... I can help you with college too."
"College?" Toni repeated. Robin did really well in school – maybe he could get her into one of those really fancy colleges that only overachievers ended up in. She could see it, all within reach.
"Yes," Robin said. "I'll help you."

The inside of the Metro Diner was actually not as sloppy as Connie would've thought. When Saige had suggested that they'd go eat at a diner after school, Connie imagined it as a dive with dirty stains on the tile floor and an old miserable waitress that smoked inside the restaurant. Turns out it wasn't like that at all.
Connie, Saige, and Max had occupied one of the free red booths in the restaurant. Even though Connie and Saige had become close really fast, Max was still not sold on the idea of letting Connie into their little "business".
"You'll love the milkshakes here," Saige said to Connie who was sitting in front of her. Max was sitting next to Saige and a little left out from the pair. "I really recommend the vanilla chocolate one. So freaking delicious."
"This is the only time I'm ordering it," Connie quickly clarified with a sly smile. "I don't want to lose my figure."
"I don't think you'll have to worry about that," Saige said. "Max always orders the bacon meals on the menu and he looks the same as always. Right?"
Max didn't seem to hear her and just stared at his phone while a silent Elvis Presley tune played from the speakers. Saige nudged his elbow with her arm to wake him up from his Snake game, and he quickly looked up at the two of them.
"Yeah, yeah, sorry," he said. "I zoned out when you started talking about the homecoming dance. Can't blame me for that one."
"What is it with guys always hating the school dances?" Saige wondered.
"I guess we're fucked then, Saige!" Connie said ironically and rolled her narrow eyes. "No guys will want to go with us. Guess we'll just have to go with each other. What a shame."
"Hey!" Saige protested. "You'll be honored to go with me. Homecoming is more of a friend thing anyway, so we won't have to worry about dates until prom rolls around."
A young waiter dressed in black popped by their table with a tray to give Connie her foamy milkshake and to give Saige a blueberry pancake. The waiter said that Max's meal would be out in just a minute and Max groaned after he had left.
"Typical," he muttered. "Go ahead and start without me."
Saige happily rubbed her palms together before digging in. Connie sipped on the milkshake and yes, it was as heavenly as Saige had said it would be.
"Anyway, what about the decade dance?" Max brought up. He never thought he'd actively initiate a discussion about high school dances, but hanging with two girls at the same time was probably a bad influence. "Or the winter formal?"
"Those aren't as important compared to prom," Saige said and waved it off with her fork that was now covered in jam.
"You guys have a decade dance?" Connie asked as she took another sip of the milkshake with her long fingers swirled around the red and white straw. "Cool. We had Sadie Hawkins back in California. Really sucked."
"Oh boohoo, did nobody want to go with you?" Max asked as he stole a blueberry from Saige's plate.
"Actually...," she began and paused when the waiter came back with Max's meal. "It sucked because someone spiked the punch with non-alcoholic vodka. He nearly got in trouble when the principal saw him dumping the entire bottle in the punch, but he was let off once they saw that it was alcohol-free. I think he would've preferred to be punished."
"Your friend sounds like an idiot," Max said. "I would never fuck up like that. I didn't even know non-alcoholic vodka existed."
"Which is exactly why you would very likely fuck it up," Saige filled in for him and shot a smile at Connie. They both giggled at him as Max tried to remember why he had even tagged along in the first place.
The trio sat in the booth for another half hour before Connie left to go home. Saige had waved her off while Max had just sat at the booth and played with the salt grains on the table, sweeping them into a small pile.
"She's cool, isn't she?" Saige asked him after Connie had left.
"She's boring," was Max's reply to the question. "Why did you invite her?"
"Because I think she's not boring," Saige said and shrugged.
Max looked up from the salt to look at Saige, who was staring at him with a chewed up toothpick between her lips.
"No, seriously," Max said. "You never invite anybody else. This is the first time."
"Alright, fine," Saige said in defeat. "I met her at Jenny's party, right? We started talking and she somehow knew all the gossip about Tommy and about Kyle and Jenny. And she's only been here for like a week! Imagine how much dirt we could uncover if she joins the business. If we had more information on everybody, more people would be buying it from us. It's a fucking goldmine!"
"How much did she know?" Max asked skeptically.
"A lot," Saige clarified. "Like, she knew all the details about the Spencer and Tommy drama from last year."
"Everybody knows about that," Max said while crumbling the salt grains between his fingers. "She knows about Toni and the Central Parkers," Saige said and slapped her hands on the table to get Max to pay attention.
"We didn't even know about that. And I didn't know that she knew but she did and she could've totally fooled me."
"I want to hear it from her before I let her into the business," Max said and lowered his head so that his shag haircut covered his eyes. He looked back up at Saige, who was pushing her hair back behind her ear where those invisible flowers were. "No promises."

Melanie had taken the early subway back home from school. It was becoming her routine and she didn't mind waking up earlier to catch the subway except for how crowded it was, how many times she got sucked in between the commuters, and how it smelled on the subway stations. And maybe the fact that Connie always took taxis to school and home.
Their mom had made sure to give Melanie money for taxi rides too, but Melanie just kept the money and took the subway instead. She was saving it all up to buy something really special, but she didn't know what. Maybe that Diane Setterfield novel from last year that she really wanted to read.
As usual, Melanie was the first one to come home to the apartment and the lights were all turned off. She flicked them on and noticed the pile of mail on the kitchen counter that she must've missed when she ran off that morning. Most of it looked like boring bills to her mother and some clothing advertisements, but then she spotted a postcard that was buried between the mail that she probably would've missed if she hadn't given it another thought.
Melanie dropped her heavy backpack on the wooden floor and lifted the postcard to look at the front. It had gotten a little bent from its journey, but it wasn't very noticeable.
On the postcard it said Greetings from Los Angeles, California! and behind the text there was a picture of the Hollywood sign looking exactly as dull as Melanie had left it. The whole postcard seemed pretty dull once you looked at it for more than a minute, actually. It looked like any other ordinary postcard.
But since Melanie never saw any fun stuff in the mail, this seemed unusually exciting. Reading Connie's mail sounded so out of character for her but at the same time so enticing. Or who knew, maybe it was to their mom. She was still pretty young and glamorous, and since she worked as a model she was no stranger to excitement. Melanie's mind drifted in all sorts of directions, imagining what kind of postcard her mother would get. It could be from an old flame, from one of her modeling friends... Or maybe both.
Melanie flipped the card over expecting something juicy, but all she got was a short message saying I miss you – Cali isn't as fun without you. Hope you're enjoying New York!
Melanie read through it again, thinking that she might've missed something. Was there a secret message somewhere? What did it mean? She looked at it again, now spotting the signature from one H. A. Wait. Melanie almost didn't believe it when she made the connection. Henry... Andersen? Was this card really from him? No, it couldn't be. Mom probably knew someone else with those initials.
But then Melanie looked at the address on the right and her heart skipped a beat or maybe two. There, scribbled in tiny letters, was her name. Melanie Myers.
She felt so touched that she almost forgot Connie would probably be getting home soon. Connie couldn't see the postcard.
Melanie quickly ran up the stairs to her room with the card clutched against her chest, and then tried to come up with a good hiding spot. She remembered something about the best hiding place being in plain sight, and quickly pinned it on her bulletin board. She stepped back a few paces and it blended in perfectly with her other pictures and newspaper cutouts.
Now, the tricky part was if she was supposed to reply and send Henry a postcard too or just send him a text. Or neither?

Song: Elvis Presley - Can't Help Falling in Love (1961)

A/N - I know that this chapter is a few days late and that totally goes against the "post the chapters on their corresponding dates" thing I've got going on, so I'll try to do better about updating on time. Also, the second chapter and the beginning of the third was written with an outline with the dialogue already planned and I was wondering what you prefer? Is the story better when it's planned out, is it better when it's more spontaneous, or is there no difference? Anyway, thank you for reading this. Really means a lot. Here's a drawing of Melanie, once again drawn by my amazing friend @Movi_48 on Instagram.  ❤